And now, you could say it was being put to a somewhat more peculiar use.
What awaited Miska inside the massive tree, with its twisting maze of stairs and passageways and both small rooms and structures two or three stories tall was May—who’d been abducted just shortly before her—and about a dozen black figures. At a glance it was clear that the shadowy figures croaking like amphibians were synthetic life forms, but among them there was one who looked like a normal human, and he stepped to the fore.
“Ah, just what I would expect from a Noble! You may have lost mastery of your body, but the control of your brain seems to be another matter,” he said.
Beneath the night-vision goggles set in his helmet, his right eye alone seemed to give off a fierce gleam—he only had the use of one eye. From the nose down, the rest of his face was concealed from prying eyes by a shield of black metal. But that shield was apparently equipped with an amplifier for his voice. Every time the man drew a breath, it was accompanied by a rasping whistle.
“However, that is unfortunate for you,” he continued. “Now that you’re before me and I see that you’re a Noble, I can’t let you have an easy death. Soak her in the vat!”
Apparently Miska knew what the result of this torture would be, and her beautiful countenance—ordinarily the very epitome of haughtiness—grew pale, as if the blood had drained from it.
Without further ado, pulleys clanged from the darkened region of the ceiling and a container that would easily accommodate five or six people was lowered. Several of those who stood behind the leader quickly raced over and steadied it on the floor. Water filled it to the very brim.
“I’ve heard that if you soak them for a full day, even a Noble will be headed for the next life. Is that true? Well, I have a different punishment to try with you.” Turning to the others, he said, “At any rate, get her in the water.”
A number of arms lifted Miska like a mannequin and put her in the vat.
“Add the acid!”
One of the man’s subordinates appeared from somewhere carrying another container and began to transfer its contents into Miska’s vat with a wooden ladle. When the semitransparent liquid came into contact with the water, white smoke went up like steam from a geyser.
An unvoiced scream split the Noblewoman’s seductive lips. The acid-laced water—or the water-laced acid—burned Miska’s skin, dissolving the very flesh.
“This acid was especially made for torturing the Nobility. But truth be told, it was a Noble that came up with it,” the leader remarked with visible amusement. “Although it won’t destroy you completely, it’ll torment the hell out of you. There’s really no difference between what humans and Nobles will do, is there?”
“Who—who are you?” Miska heard herself ask.
The pain was so great she’d regained the use of her vocal chords. Yet her body remained immobilized.
“Why not simply run me through the heart . . . Your halfhearted games . . . will be repaid a thousandfold in pain . . .”
Her voice then became an agonized squeak. More acid had been added.
“That’s enough. But don’t let it get any weaker, either,” the leader told the subordinate holding the ladle, and then he turned to May, who stood in a daze beside him. When he placed his right hand on the crown of her head, a single spasm went through May’s body, and then the life returned to her eyes.
“Notice anything?” the leader inquired as the girl backed away from him reflexively.
“Never fear. We won’t do anything to you for the time being,” the leader said, his voice tinged with mirth. “We’d intended to use you as a hostage, but the Noblewoman came along, too. We can make better use of her. Just stay here and behave yourself for a while.”
He gave May a frightening glance that froze her on the spot.
“What will you do with her?” the girl asked when she saw the vat that contained Miska.
“That should be obvious. We’re going to use her as a hostage instead of you. Luck was with you.”
“She looks like she’s in terrible pain. What did you do to her?”
“We’re soaking her in a special acid that dissolves Nobles’ flesh. Though it can’t destroy them, I’m sure it must hurt terribly.”
“How could you do such a thing? Please, stop it! Save her!”
“What?!”
The leader’s reaction was the very peak of astonishment, but Miska herself must’ve been even more dumbfounded. Her agonized expression quickly turned to face the girl.
The leader fixed May with a hard stare.
“You mean . . . When I heard they were traveling with human children, I thought you were their snack, but you still look normal enough. Why would a human stick up for a Noble?”
The information he had on May must’ve been supplied by the first group of assassins the group had encountered.
“I’m not sticking up for her at all,” the girl replied clearly. “But when you do something that horrible, it makes us just as bad as the Nobility.”
The eyes of the leader opened even wider.
“Could it be you’ve been brainwashed? It wouldn’t be beyond them.”
“It’s not like that. I’m fine. That’s why I know what you’re doing isn’t right.”
“We’re talking about a Noble here. These are the same creatures that tortured and killed us like insects for many long years. In a manner of speaking, we’re just paying them back.”
“You mean you’re human, too?”
At her grave question the leader laughed out loud.
“Indeed I am. Although thanks to the Nobility you would protect, I was given my current condition.”
“So—they did something to you?”
The leader said nothing.
A voice that seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth made the two of them turn around.
“Why would a Noble choose to use a human?” Miska asked as she glared at them with glittering eyes from the bubbling vat. “You must be one of the assassins dispatched by the baron’s father. Oh, it makes my sides ache that you should choose to call us your foe. Do the Nobility’s trained dogs forget their place and stand on two legs when they see a human?”
“You’ve let your mouth run a bit too far, princess,” the leader said as he walked over to Miska and grabbed her left earlobe. Drawing the hefty broadsword that hung from his hip, he put it against the back of her ear.
“Don’t—”
Before May’s scream had finished, he sliced one of the Noblewoman’s ears clean off. Red droplets dripped into the vat of boiling acid, quickly mixing with the liquid.
“Next I’ll shave off your nose and carve out your eyes. But don’t die on me. I have a million interesting ideas of what to do to you!”
“I won’t die.”
Miska’s reply froze May.
“Do you think this is all it takes to destroy a Noble? You said we treated you like insects, but I happen to be quite fond of insects. After I was done ripping others of your kind to shreds, I always gave them to the insects to eat. The fact of the matter is, you were lower than worms.”
She tried to laugh, but her face was pulled to one side. The leader grabbed a fistful of her golden hair and yanked it right out of her head. Half the beauty’s face—or rather, her whole face by this point—was stained with vermilion, but as shocking as this was, it was the sight of her half-denuded head that made May hide her face in her hands.
Dropping the bloodied ear and clump of hair on the floor, the leader stuck his hand in the acid.
“Oh, your face is a mess now. I suppose we’ll have to disinfect that wound, won’t we?”
He let the water he’d scooped up fall directly into the wound. The flesh dissolved, and a cry split Miska’s lips.
“Have some more,” he said, water trailing from his hand as he raised it, but then a black shape hit his arm.
In a bound, May had sailed over the leader, delivering a kick to his wrist with one foot in the process. The wa
ter splashed on the leader’s coat, which gave off white smoke.
A number of figures surrounded May when she landed.
“Don’t touch her,” the leader reprimanded them. “Being human, I should think even the most upstanding of people would be overjoyed to see a Noble in torment. Put the Noblewoman in a cell, and bring the girl to my room.”
The man actually sounded rather intrigued.
“Mister Galil, sir,” one of his subordinates said in a froglike voice.
“What is it?”
“Part of the water harp has been broken. It seems a foe has slipped in through the break.”
“Let them come. Whether our foe is the baron or his bodyguard, we should be more than enough to handle either of them.”
THE TIGER AND THE WOLF
CHAPTER 3
I
__
Dreached the colossal tree about thirty minutes after he first began following the tracks. After carving his way through the harp strings that’d assailed him like so many tributaries running to a common stream, he’d been able to advance through the rain. And in the vast and well-lit hollow in the tree he found the leader waiting alone to meet him.
“Rumors of your beauty can’t do you credit—you’re D, I take it. I am Galil, leader of Lord Balazs’s Dark Water Forces.”
“Where are the two women?” D asked, keeping his question short and sweet. There was no murderous intent in him now. But when it came out, only his dead and buried foes could say what fate lay in store for his opponent.
“Not to worry. We haven’t laid a finger on the girl. But whether or not that continues to be the case will depend on discussions between you and myself.”
“Where’s the other one?”
“If you mean the Noblewoman, we put her in a cell after having a bit of fun with her. We couldn’t destroy her, but she’s in no condition to escape.” With a cruel smile the leader—Galil—added, “If you wish, I can show you to her at any time. But first, I have two or three things to ask you. Why would a Vampire Hunter, of all people, take a job guarding a Noble?”
“Because his aim is to slay a Noble.”
“How about the Noblewoman, then?”
“She stays per orders of my employer.”
“I’m amazed that humans have been traveling with Nobles without anything happening to them. But they’ll bare their fangs sooner or later. D, which side are you on?”
A naked blade pressed right against the base of Galil’s neck. And no one there had even seen D draw it.
“I’ll give you five seconds,” said the Hunter. “Bring the women. If I have to wait a minute, I’ll take your ears off. At two minutes, it’ll be your nose, and after three, I’ll carve your eyes out.”
“Are you out of your mind? If you do any of that to me, they’ll do the same to those two,” Galil countered, but his eyes were certainly swimming with terror.
“Five,” D counted off coolly. “Four . . . Three . . . Two . . .”
There was neither a lethal intent nor an unearthly air about him. Anyone who didn’t know the Hunter would’ve sworn he had the blade out in jest.
“One,” he finally said.
“Okay,” Galil said gravely, raising his right hand.
Without the slightest delay, the sound of pulleys echoed from the ceiling and two basketlike objects were lowered. The gigantic birdcages and the thick iron bars that surrounded them were red with rust. And sure enough, May and Miska were inside them. Once they’d reached the floor, the doors opened naturally and the two of them stumbled out. Without a second thought they took shelter behind D.
“Take them and go,” said Galil.
“No, not yet,” D replied.
It was at that moment the eyes of the Dark Water Forces’ commander lit up with true fear. As he leapt back, a flash of white light pursued him.
D’s blow was true, and his sword bisected Galil’s torso. But what did the Hunter make of the mysterious sensation his blade met?
When Galil’s torso landed ten feet away, it had indeed been sliced straight through just below the chest.
“Do you find this strange, D?” he asked, trying to laugh or smile, but his lips were too stiff for either. He had, after all, just taken a stroke from D’s sword.
“So, he’s a water warrior?” said a voice from D’s left hand that he alone heard. “He’s one of those liquid humans they say the Nobility made to supervise their synthetic soldiers in battle. There weren’t many—maybe a dozen every thousand years—but I hear they were the death of ten million of their foes. This could be . . . bad.”
“Not even your sword can cut me,” said Galil. “This is the body I was given when I became the Nobility’s pet, so I might destroy Nobles. D, it’s still not too late. Join forces with me. Go back to being a real Hunter. Together, the two of us can destroy Baron Balazs and the woman.”
Without a sound, a writhing blackness spilled from the entrance to the chamber and inched toward D’s feet—water. Galil had referred to them as the Dark Water Forces. Rising from a flow that couldn’t have been more than a fraction of an inch deep, a number of lumps flowed determinedly toward D.
Leaving the two women there, D kicked off the ground. His coat sailed out like a pair of wings.
While it was unclear what he made of the Hunter hanging there like a supernatural bird about to descend on its prey, Galil commanded his men, “Get him!”
A number of the shadowy figures bounded to D’s rear. In the time it took them to bring down their axes, a far swifter and more dazzling light zipped through them.
D landed some fifteen feet from Galil’s subordinates.
“The three of them have also been given ‘water warrior’ abilities. Although not as perfected as myself, I dare say mere steel can’t cut them down,” Galil laughed snidely. His subordinates stood there arrogantly—the man had witnessed D’s blade mowing through their torsos.
Without so much as looking at the opponents that surrounded him, D stepped forward. The trio was poised to follow after him. And at that moment, something incredible happened. Black water spurted out of the torso of each in all directions and the trio quickly lost their forms, reduced to a mysterious liquid that spread across the floor.
“My water warriors—have you cut down my water warriors, D?!”
D’s blade slipped into the face of Galil, who was now as still as death, but the resistance it met only felt like water.
“You’re wasting your time,” Galil sneered, but he quickly abandoned this attitude.
Pressing his right hand to his face, Galil reeled backward. Black water was dripping through his fingers.
D’s sword had sliced the impervious body of the liquid human.
Sensing another blow about to descend on him from above, Galil exclaimed, “Look behind you!”
The young man wasn’t the kind to turn around at such a remark from an opponent. What stopped him in his tracks and stayed his blade was May’s cramped cry of, “D!”
Both women had been seized by the head from behind, and the sharp blade of an ax rested against the throat of May and the heart of Miska.
__
May had been returned to a room in the old board-covered jail—a tower that hung out in the middle of the hollow—about twenty minutes after Galil summoned her to his room. The cells were side by side. While the Dark Water Forces member who’d brought her there was busy opening an antiquated lock, May took a look at Miska. The Noblewoman was slumped against the wall with her back to the girl.
“Are you okay?” May asked.
The acid may have only had an effect on the flesh of the Nobility, as there was no change in the clothes Miska wore.
She soon got her reply.
“What . . . what did you tell them?”
The way her voice tapered off at the end like someone dying terrified May.
“Nothing at all.”
“You’re lying . . . Surely you told them all about myself and the baron . . . you little traitor!
Human beings . . . especially ones like you . . . are nothing but vulgar cretins . . .”
“No! I just listened to what the guy who caught us had to say—that man Galil.”
“Galil . . . So, that’s his name?”
The second May heard the Noblewoman’s voice, she backed away.
“At present, my body is melted, and regeneration will take quite some time. However, when that has come to pass, I shall tear off his arms and legs and head with my own two hands.”
“Stop it! If you do that—if you just keep the hate going back and forth, nothing will ever get any better!”
Once she’d spoken, the door to May’s cell was opened.
The synthetic person quickly left again.
May tried desperately to get Miska to talk to her. Though she went over to the bars to make her entreaties, there was no reply. Muttering and pounding the wall, she’d already given up when one of the bricks her little fists hit seemed to slide back into the wall. On closer examination, she found that it could be removed without disturbing the mortar around it, and once the brick had been put back in place, no one would ever notice it. No doubt long ago, some prisoner confined to this cell had used it as a means of communicating with a friend in the adjacent cell, or had started it as part of an escape attempt.
“Are you okay? Are you in pain?” the girl inquired in a low voice so as not to be heard by the guards wherever they might be, but there was no reply.
Removing her locket and clutching it in one hand, May crept across the ground. The hole left by the removable brick was down at the same level as the floor. Her hand barely fit through it. Just for good measure, she put her arm in up to the elbow.
Suddenly something latched onto her wrist. More than the viselike pressure, it was the bone-chilling cold of those fingers that horrified May.
“That hurts . . . let go!”
“Such a warm hand you have,” Miska remarked, a shadowy echo to her voice.
“So, you can still talk. That’s good,” the girl said with relief, and at the same time she got the feeling that the pressure on her wrist eased.
Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two Page 19